Inuicka mitologia nieba

7/25/2019 Inuicka mitologia nieba

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A Collection of Curricula

for the STARLAB

Inuit Star Lore Cylinder

2008 by Science First/STARLAB, 95 Botsford Place, Buffalo, NY 14216. www.starlab.com. All rights reserved.

Including:

Inuit Star Lore by Ole Knudsen


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Curriculum Guide Contents

Index:

Constellations and star groups on the Inuit Star Lore cylinder. Aagjuuk Akuttujuuk Sivulliik and KingulliqThe little orphan boy, the old man and the grandmother Ullaktut, Kingulliq, Nanurjuk and Qimmiit.

The Runners and the great polar bear hunt. Sakiattiaq, The Pleiades Nuuttuittuq The one that never moves Pituaq The Lamp Stand Uqsuutaattiaq Cassiopeia Quturjuuk The Collarbones Sikuliaqsiujuittuq Procyon Singuuriq Sirius

Tukturjuit The Big Dipper Aviguti The Milky Way Ulloriaqjuat The planets

On Inuit star loreThe skies of the far NorthSome mythological storiesSome Inuit wordsCredits etc.Suggested activities.


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Inuit Star Lore D-3 Cylinder Guides

Constellations and Star Groups on

the Inuit Star Lore Cylinder

Note

In the following text, the letters 'AS' followed by a page number refer to areference in John MacDonalds book The Arctic Sky, 2nd printing 2000,on which this material is based. Among the Inuit, there is a huge differencein spelling and pronunciation. In the old days before a written languageexisted this can a.o. be credited to or blamed on the travelers who wrote thelegends and stories down. Today there are several dictionaries, each cover-ing its own area. Words and spelling in this text are mainly taken directlyfrom The Arctic Sky, and only occasionally supplemented with modernspellings, mainly from Greenland.

Aagjuuk [AS44]

For the Inuit of old, the new year started when the two stars calledAagjuukroseabove the horizon in the North East shortly before dawn. This happens in the daysaround mid December every year, and Aagjuuk is clearly the most important of theInuit constellations.

The names of these two stars in the modern astronomical literature are Altair andTarazed, or alpha Aquilae and beta Aquilae, both in the constellation Aquila, TheEagle. They belong to that part of the evening sky of late summer which can be seenin the south. Altair is one of the prominent stars of the 'Summer Triangle' together withVega in Lyra and Deneb in Cygnus, The Swan. The same stars can be seen in otherdirections at other times of the day and on other dates of the year.

Throughout January, February and March, Aagjuuk is seen during the pre-dawnhours but thereafter the stars are rapidly taken over by sunlight as the days lengthen.

The meaning of the term Aagjuuk is not clear, but in a legend from Noatak, Alaska,it is said that it means something like the two beams of light cast by the Sun when itrst reappears above the horizon in late December [AS283]. There are also storiesof a grandmother or another old woman pursuing a young boy up into the sky. Theboy becomes Altair and the old woman the fainter Tarazed.

In most of the Inuit area there is a connection between the rst visibility of these starsat dawn and the reappearance of the Sun after the dark period, and it is quite obvi-ous why the Inuit also saw this time as the beginning of something new and goodafter the long, hard winter. The Aagjuuk stars also signalled the time for the midwintercelebrations, involving good eating, masquerade, partner exchange and variousshamanistic rituals. In some places this started at the rst new moon after the Aagjuukwas seen. After this date, the playing of string-games (like cats cradle, e.g.) wasstrictly taboo in many areas, for the whole brighter part of the year.

Of course the same two stars can be seen much more easily when they stand highin the south during early autumn, but they only seem to have had the name Aagjuukwhen they were low in the northeast, there lling the purpose of heralding the longerdays to come.

Aagjuuk is the name used in the Igloolik area in Nunavut, Canada. Here is a shortlist of other names for the same constellation, used in other parts of the Arctic.


4/25Cylinder Guides Inuit Star Lore D-4

Agru-la-wik, A.gru Point Barrow, Alaska

Aaguruk, Aagruuk North Alaska

Agyuk Coronation Gulf

Aagssuk, Aagssiit North and West Greenland old sources.

Aassuutit, Aaxxuuk North and West Greenland modern.

Asiit, Aavssit East Greenland old sources.

Aattik, Aagjik East Greenland modern.

Akuttujuuk [AS52]

Bright and reddishBetelgeuse and the fainter Bellatrix, that make up the shoulders ofthe giant Orion are 'those two placed far apart' in the Inuit sky. They were used fortime keeping. During all of the dark season they appeared in the Eastern sky some-times during the night. When they were seen during the evening twilight it was a signthat the days were getting longer. One would say at this time that 'the Akuttujuuk hascaught up'.

Only one interpretation can be connected withAkuttujuukwith some certainty. In

Western Greenland, it was told that the two stars Inerfuk (Iversuk modern) lookedlike 'two persons that contend with songs or verses in taunting one another'. Thebright red star Aldebaran in Taurus, The Bull, is then the lamp named Nenneroakproviding light for those who sing and dance. You can nd another interpretation ofAldebaran in the section on Nanurjukin the story of the great Polar Bear hunt.

Sivulliik and Kingulliq [AS54, AS76]

Sivulliikis plural and means 'the rst ones' and Kingulliqmeans 'the one behind',or the second one. The two stars Arcturus and much fainter Muphrid, both in the con-stellation Bootes, rise rst in the north northeast, followed by the one behind, whichis bright blue Vega in Lyra. Vega is actually circumpolar, so it never passes below thehorizon, and thus it never rises, but it always follows bright Arcturus across the skysome 60 behind.

In the legend of Iliarjugaarjuk, the little orphan boy [AS230] the three stars obtainnames as the story is told. Muphrid is the boy, Iliarjugaarjuk, Arcturus is the oldman Uttuqalualukfollowing him and Vega is the old woman, maybe the boysgrandmother named Ningiuraaluk. You can nd the story in the section of selectedlegends.

In East Greenland Vega is called Nelarsik (Nalaarsik modern), another brother ofthe Sun apart from the Moon. Nelarsik is very helpful, telling us time when it is dark.He also once shot an arrow, killing one of the women causing thunder, which is why,in the Arctic, thunder is a relatively rare phenomenon.

The star Rigel is also named Kingulliq, 'the one behind' in connection with the storyof the great polar bear hunt.

When Arcturus is meant in the singular it is called Sivulliq or Sivulliaaluk.

Some other spellings:

Sivlliq, sivulliik Alaska

Siugdlit, Siulliit modern W. Greenland

Hiulliit N. Greenland, Thule area.

Kingullialuk Igloolik

Kiudleq Repulse Bay


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Nelarsik East Greenland

Ullaktut, Kingulliq, Nanurjuk and Qimmiit. The Runners and the

great polar bear hunt.

The three belt stars of Orion, Mintaka, Alnitak and Alnilam are three hunters pursuinga polar bear. [AS] They are not individually named. The fourth man of the huntingcompany dropped his mitt and had to retrieve it. That is Rigel; the right foot of Orion.His name is Kingulliq, 'the one behind', or maybe what you see is just the mitt lying

there because the fourth hunter got safely back to earth? [AS56]

Higher up in the sky, to the right and in front of the three hunters is the polar bearhimself, Nanurjuk, surrounded by a pack of hunting dogs [AS57]. The dogs, calledQimmiitare the V-shaped cluster of stars around Aldebaran, called by the astrono-mers The Hyades [AS64]. Nanurjuk himself is of course bright Aldebaran, the RedEye of Taurus, The Bull.

Below the runners you can see their children, Qangiammaariik,carrying warmclothes of caribou skin for their fathers who are probably by now becoming quitecold because they perpetually have to run across the sky. The children, or maybenephews or nieces, are the stars of the sword of Orion, looking quite fuzzy becauseof the furry skins they carry. [AS90]

In other versions of the story Aldebaran and the Hyades are a bear hunter and hisdogs. The Pleiades is then the bear surrounded by the dogs. The belt of Orion issomething entirely different: Three steps cut into a steep snowbank; or, in anotherstory from Greenland, three seal hunters that lost their way and paddled up into thesky. The last version is a parallel to a similar story from the west coast of Norway,where they are three lost shermen, Fiskarkarene.

Sakiattiak, The Pleiades [AS68]

Further to the right and above Nanurjuk and the dogs we nd the small fuzzy clusterof the Pleiades. The Inuit have given this distinct group of stars many different namesand many roles it their star lore.

In some areas of the Arctic, the Pleiades are connected to the great polar bear hunt.

In Greenland they are Qilugtuusat, (Qiluttuusatmodern), the 'baying dogs', apack of dogs letting out the special barks that signify for the hunter that they havesurrounded the bear.

In many parts of Northern Canada the name is a variant of Sakiattiak, TheBreastbone (of a Ringed Seal nattiq). For a person with good eyesight this reectsthe 5-10 stars visible. The seal breastbone consists of 9 small bones, and the root ofthe word Sakiattiak is 'chopped or cut into (pieces?)'. (In many parts of the world thePleiades are called The Seven Stars, or Seven Sisters, although more stars can beseen by some people.)

In the Alaska area the Inuit name is Kaguyagat, the Red Fox, or sometimes LittleFoxes.

There is also indication of the Pleiades having been used for time keeping and fornavigation.

Nuuttuittuq, the one that never moves. AS59

This is of course Polaris, the North Star, in Greenland calledAvangnata uvdloria(Avannaata Ulloriaa modern). Keen observers like the Inuit will easily have noticedthat of all the stars this one never moves. Inuit living in more southerly latitudes haveused Nuuttuittuqas a navigations aid, pointing North. Far north of the ArcticCircle Polaris is so high in the sky that its usefulness for this is very limited though. InIgloolik at 70 and in Greenland north of Disko Island this is denitely the case.



Pituaq [AS62]

In the constellation Cassiopeia the three southernmost stars form an equilateraltriangle, and this is Pituaq, the 'lamp-stand'. This refers to the three stones, or postsmade from wood, stone, or bone, placed upright in the oor of a dwelling in the formof a triangle upon which rests a soapstone oil lamp, the qulliq.

Alternative words with the same meaning are Ikurraattiaq or Nikurratiit.

Uqsuutaattiaq [AS88]Uqsuutaattiaqis also connected to the constellation Cassiopeia. It is a containermade out of a whole seal skin, used for keeping blubber or oil for the lamp in. Oneshould imagine a lled seal skin lying on its side and with one ipper sticking out.

No legends or stories of this constellation seems to have survived.

Quturjuuk [AS65]

Four bright stars to the upper left of Orion comprise Quturjuuk, 'The Collarbones'.They are Castor and Pollux in Gemini, The Twins and Capella and Menkalinan in Au-riga, The Charioteer. Though the spellings vary, the meaning seems to be the same allover the Arctic. In West Greenland the spelling Killab Kuttuk in a source from 1767is recognizable (Qilaap Qutua - modern) even though the author mistranslates the

words. The name comes from the distinct resemblance of a set of human collarbones,or, as some say the shoulder line if seen from the other direction.

Strangely enough in spite of the widespread use of the constellation, no legends areknown in connection with it.

Sikuliaqsiujuittuq [AS72]

The single bright star Procyon in Canis Minor, The Lesser Dog has a rather funnyname, meaning 'the one who never goes onto the newly formed sea-ice'. One under-stands why, because there is a story [AS213] about a grossly oversized man whosesheer weight prevented him from going onto the sea-ice. To survive he stole the catchof other hunters, but they took a strong revenge, killing him on the ice one day whennally the ice was strong enough to carry even him.

When Sikuliaqsiujuittuq(Sikuliarsiujuittuq - modern Greenland) is rising in theEast in Winter you can see it twinkling in reddish colours low above the sea-ice. Thecolour red signies the blood of the murdered man.

Singuuriq [AS73]

Far below Procyon you nd Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky. It sits so low inthe sky that only Inuit living south of 73 North will ever see it, and then only in midJanuary. Due to the low altitude, it will twinkle and ash in different brilliant colours,and it will have a reddish or orange hue most of the time. The name SinguuriqfromIgloolik appropriately means like a ickering lamp.

Around Hudson Bay it is just Ulluriaraaluk, the Big Star, and in West Greenland itbears a proper name, Nelleraglek, but unfortunately no legend accompanies the

name anymore. It might be a misspelling of Nalikkatteeq, one of the names of TheEntrail Snatcher.

Singuuriq is a weather forecaster: when reddish, it will be very cold. When it doesnot twinkle mild weather is on its way, and when a storm is coming the star behaveslike a ickering lamp ame in a draft.

There is a story about an old woman named Singuuriq dwelling near the route takenby those travelling between the Earth and the Moon (the shamans). The old womanwas known to mutter at passersbybecause they caused her lamp to icker.


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In the Western Arctic it was called Red fox and white Fox, Kajuqtuq Tiriganniarlubecause the ickering made one think of two foxes ghting to gain access of a singlefoxhole.

Tukturjuit [AS79]

The best known constellation of them all, The Great Dipper is connected to caribouor reindeer in most of the Arctic, and not as one might expect to a (polar) bear. TheDipper is part of the constellation Ursa Major, The Great Bear and this bear, always

seen in a northerly direction from ancient Greece actually gave name to the area thatwe are concerned with in this text: Bear is Arktos in Greek; hence Arctic.

To some Inuit the star group is one single caribou; to others it is a ock of 7, one foreach star.

Which part of the animal that belongs to what star is source of considerable dis-agreement, so here we have chosen to illustrate one caribou looking left, mostly foraestethic reasons.

In some parts of Canada the caribou are followed by a pack of wolves, but there isno sure identication with specic stars, so you can use your own imagination there.

In Greenland in more recent times the stars of the Great Dipper are mostly called

Asaluusat because they looks like a kayak line rack used for winding up the harpoonline.

Aviguti [AS91]

Not a constellation, though denitely comprised of stars, the Milky Way is identiedby the Inuit in various ways. Some call it a divider;Aviguti, either just dividing thesky or acting as a separation between the winds, so that if e.g. an easterly wind pre-vails, the Milky Way is actually blown a bit towards the west. Do not expect to seethis in the real sky though! The idea may have come from the fact that in most parts ofthe Arctic the Milky Way is rather difcult to see at all because of aurorae, Moonlightor the usual haze of ice crystals in the air. At various times of the night the Milky Wayband of light spans the sky in different directions and thus one can easily imagine

that this has to do with changing wind directions.In Greenland the divider is interpreted in a slightly different, very pragmatic way asQilaup sivdlia (Qilaap Sillia - modern), 'the middle line on the belly of an animalwhere it is cut up'.

Some North American Inuit use the terms the river or the snowshoe tracks of theRaven, and this may be inuenced by the sky lore of Native American Indiansfurther South.

Ulloriaqjuat, The Planets [AS92]

The planets are generally just called Ulluriaqujat, 'great stars', though Venus maybe called Ulluriaqjuaq 'The Great Star' occasionally. They do not seem to haveinuenced Inuit sky lore much, even though the ecliptic with the planets during the

dark part of the year rise to almost halfway up in the sky.

The slower moving planets stay invisible for many years in a row. In the summer it isalways very light for most of the day and night, plus the summer Ecliptic is very lowduring the nighttime. Parts of the Ecliptic never rise above the horizon in the Arctic forthe same reason that the Sun stays below horizon for some time every winter.

Some of the planets do seem to have had some signicance in Greenland though.When two planets meet (a conjunction) they are said to be two females that visit ortear each others hair out. In Amassalik in East Greenland Jupiter is said to be the



mother of the Sun; it is very dangerous for the angakkut (the shamans) to pass near iton their journeys to the Moon, and in Thule a seal hunter, the great Naalagssartoq(Naalassartoq - modern) once rose up into the air and, according to legend [AS281],was transformed into Venus, giving it his own name, meaning 'the one who standsand listens'.


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On Inuit Sky Lore

Of the arctic cultures and beliefs much has been written down by various travellers,anthropologists and other friends of the Arctic peoples, the Inuit. It is also obvious thatmuch has been lost forever, in part because many of the Europeans, the missionariesand the administrators took Inuit culture to be very primitive and not worth dealingwith, or by all means writing down. This has now changed, but alas, mostly too late.

In the few written accounts surviving only a few constellations are mentioned; (AS 14)between ten and twenty. There is some reason to believe that in the old days manymore existed, but the cultural chain has been broken and knowledge of Inuit starsand star lore is not a living thing among the young anymore. These notes are mainlyan attempt to give the stars back to the children of the Arctic.

The author is very much aware that by attempting this, there is a risk of turning manythings totally the wrong way around. By its nature this has to be a short written ac-count, and by picking one version of a story instead of another, and by letting anartist draw some of the gures in the sky under the planetarium dome, the mind ofthe listener is shaped into a very limited and maybe even misleading understandingof what the elders meant by a story. We do nd, though that any knowledge is betterthan not knowing anything of the old traditions at all.

There seems to have been a twofold use of the stars and constellations. One use isvery practical and pragmatic: for timekeeping and for navigation mostly. Certainstars have special roles at certain times of the year. Being able to nd and remembersome stars could save your life if you were far out on the sea ice or inland and hadlost your orientation.

The other use, mainly for the same stars and constellations was for storytelling. Thiscould be just a pastime or a way of teaching the proper way to behave in a worldof gods and spirits. For most of these stories only the entertaining aspect has beenrecorded. The deeper mythological meanings may have been forgotten by thestoryteller, or there may have been a taboo towards telling such profound things to astranger.

Sometimes a certain story was told in almost the same version all over the Arctic,concerning the same stars. At other times the person telling a good story just pickedsome stars visible at the time and used them as characters in the story. This is ratherirritating to a rational mind wanting to put order and system in the old tales, but sucha systematic approach is quite un-Inuit. A good story becomes even better if the story-teller gives it a personal touch, elaborating on aspects of the story of common interestand giving the narration a local angle.

The myths, legends and stories cited here are as they were recorded. They reectthe values and thoughts of a people that has survived the harsh arctic conditions formillennia. The wording used may not be considered suitable for children due to dif-ferences in age and cultural background, so feel free to adapt your presentation as astoryteller accordingly. The drawings on the cylinder are pure conjecture on behalf ofthis writer and the artist, and will hopefully at the least be an enjoyable experience.



The World of the Inuit

Knud Rasmussen, during an interview in the early 1920s in Igloolik persistently askedthe angakok Ava: What do you believe?. His answer, when it came, was, We do

not believe, we fear, meaning that so many things can go fatally wrong in the Arcticdue to weather, bad luck in hunting, illness or suffering. What one can rightly do isto perform the proper rituals at the right time and uphold the different taboos. Then ifyou are of a positive inclination, hope for the best.

Inuit have explanations for most of the phenomena of their world; and just like thestar lore some explanations are mythological and others are built on keen observa-tions of the phenomena.

The world is, of course, at, as anyone can see. It is a large disk, probably round,and thicker in the middle. It is far too big to be moving, so when stars move it mustbe because the sky is moving overhead. The sky is xed to a very tall mountain far,far to the North. Up there the stars are much closer to the Earth, so you may have tobe quick with your whip to keep them away when travelling on your dog sled.

In the sod cabin where you spend Winters (in Greenland at least) you remove theroof when Spring comes to let in some fresh air. Just the same with the sky: The worldis dark during winter and in Spring the roof of the world is removed, letting the sun-shine in all of the time. Four wooden posts are said to hold up the sky, but they rot,and occasionally the angakkut have to replace them with fresh ones to keep the skyfrom falling.

The world is made up of layers. You can (if you are an angakok, a shaman) travel tothe next level down, entering via a crack or a cave in the coastal cliffs and there visitthe Great Fire People, living in a world almost like ours with sky and sea and ground.You can also travel up into the sky, Qilak,if you can nd a hole to climb or if you canrepeat the trick of The Man in the Moon; to throw your dogs, your sled and yourself

up into the air and then glide along, up in the Sky. Some also say that there are morelayers above and beneath those mentioned here, but things look more or less thesame no matter where you are.

When visiting the Moonman you may even be offered a chance of looking downthrough a hole in his oor. There under you is our whole world with villages and yourown family milling around, looking upwards in surprise if you spit, because they willthink that it is a shooting star.

The Stars

The stars are just holes in the sky, Qilak, the size of a seal skin, and they light upbecause you see the houselamps of people in the upper worlds shining through.

Thinking of stars mythologically they can be the eyes of spirits, looking down uponus. This goes to explain the twinkling or scintillation of stars, as that is caused by thewinking of the eyelids in front of the stars. One should be careful to not get too closethough, because it is also said that the red stars eat liver and the white ones kidney.Having your entrails eaten is always a clear and present danger if you travel the sky.When visiting the Moonman you will inevitably meet The Entrail Snatcher, who willtry to make you laugh. If she succeeds, she will gut you.

The stars may also be just sparks. In the East Greenland version of the Sun-Moonlegend, the brothers moss or lighted stick is about to go out, so he blows on it and


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sparks y out in all directions ending up as stars.

Finally you yourself could also transform into a star. In many of the legends peopleeventually become stars according to the common idea, that by running very fast ina circle the same way that the Sun moves over the sky you can spin your way up intothe sky more or less voluntarily.

Being transformed into stars requires severe transgressions like murder, incest, unrea-sonable violence, bad treatment of others (especially orphans), or breaking of thestrict taboos surrounding death and childbirth. The transformation has some cleans-ing effect, though, so afterwards you might become a decent person or rather spiritagain.

Shooting Stars

Adults will call these inik, (inneq - singularis, in W. Greenland and E. Canada) re orsparks. Some times in Greenland they will say that the soul of one of the forefatherswants to go for a visit and that is what causes the shooting stars. Children, rather in-differently will say ulluriat anangit, or literally star droppings. It is said that occasion-ally you can nd these sparks on the ground as meteorites or lumps of pyrite that youcan use for making re. From re to re one could say, though pyrite and mineralscontaining it have denitely not fallen from the sky.

We know that the large iron meteorites found in Cape York have been used by theInuit to hack off bits of iron to be made into points for harpoon and arrows. The wordfor iron in Northern Greenland is the same as the word for meteor. Maybe someoneonce saw an iron meteorite fall and made the right connection.

The Turning of the Year

Loosing the Sun for lengthy periods of time each year, especially in a culture that isentirely dependent on hunting for survival, has understandably inuenced Inuit culturedeeply. The new year begins when the Sun is beginning to rise again. To assure thatthis important thing will happen, there are strict taboos around this time. You muststop playing with the popular and elaborate string gures ajaraaq (like Cats Cradleetc.) or else the Sun will get caught in the strings and stop rising. In the myths wherepeople have met the Sun personied as a beautiful girl we hear the results of break-ing the taboo: her back and hindquarters are severely lacerated by the sharp strings,and she is suffering much.

In most Inuit societies time was kept by the Moon, with names for the lunar monthsthat reected what happened in nature during that month. That is with the exceptionof the two long and dark winter months when nothing happened in frozen nature, butwhen the grand festivities took place. The months had the same name: The Darkness,Tauvikjuaq.

The movement of the Sun and the Moon across the sky was explained in one of themost prevalent myths of the Inuit world (told in the section of mythological stories). TheBrother-Moon always struggled to catch up with his Sister-Sun while they traversed thesame path in the sky. At times he was starving and almost disappeared, but she fed

him, though with a rather ghastly diet, and he grew again. Occasionally his pursuitsucceeded, and he caught up with her. The Inuit word for eclipse, pulamajuq meansobscured or covered with a blanket.

There was also something benevolent and fertile to the Man in the Moon. Whenthings were really tough, when a wife was beaten too much or was unable to bearchildren, an orphan was mistreated by his housemates or when the hunters utterlyfailed to catch anything, one could call on the Moon. He might come visiting withassistance, or you might beinvited to follow him back home to the sky for a shorteror longer while. Here you would inevitably be shown how he could survey all that



happened down on Earth, especially when someone broke a taboo.

Sila

Sila is nature, the environment, the weather, the atmosphere, the keeper of life, andalso a great, dangerous and divine spirit that lives somewhere up in the air. To theInuit it is the single most important aspect of nature, to be treated with deep respect,and not to be provoked. Children born in bad weather would be carrying a bad-weather inuence with them, so that when say a snow storm was needed or the freez-

ing of the sea was overdue, one of these people would undress and go outside to callfor his or her weather to come.

The opposite would also work, with good-weather persons. This is only one aspect ofbeing integrated with Sila in the daily life.

Today Sila is still equivalent to weather, to be watched carefully at all times.

Among the weather phenomena observed were rainbows and halos around the Sunand Moon, and not least the Aurorae. These were explained as spirits playing thefavourite game of the Inuit, football (soccer !) but with a walrus cranium. A goal wasachieved if they could kick the ball and make the tusksstick into the ground. If youwanted and dared you could call the spirits of the Aurorae closer by whistling tothem.


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The Skies of the Far North

Around and above the Arctic Circle, latitude 66 33 38 North the movements ofthe sky, Sun, Moon, and planets have some characteristics that determine much of the

Inuit star lore.

To an Inuk living above the Arctic circle it is very strange to discover how different thesky is when you come South:

The Sun is in the sky even in midwinter days,

Midsummer nights are dark,

Twilight lasts only very shortly,

The stars are in strange positions and move in strange ways,

There are lots of unknown stars in the southern direction,

There are many more stars in the sky and they shine much more brightly than athome,

The Sun, Moon, and planets rise much higher in the sky, and

The Aurorae, the Northern Lights, are not out every night but only rarely.

Up to the Pole

To better understand why there is such a great difference, let us rst look at the situ-ation in the most extreme case. Let us stand for a moment at the North Pole, at 90North, although very few Inuit actually live further north than some 76, representedby Qaanaaq or Thule in Greenland.

At the Pole the stars do not rise or set. During the polar nights Polaris is exactly over-head, and all the other stars move to the right, all the way around you in at circleswith the Pole Star as the centre. In summer you do not see the stars at all.

At lower latitudes, Polaris is some degrees away from the Zenith, the top of your localsky. The altitude of Polaris above the horizon is the same in degrees as your latitude.

At 70 N the stars still move in circles only slightly inclined to the horizon, and in asliver towards the South only 20 high you will see different stars appearing with thechanging of the seasons.

At the very North Pole the Sun is in the sky half of the year and gone for the otherhalf - in principle. In the real world the Sun is visible 186 days; i.e. for more thanhalf of the year, because it has a diameter of and thus some of the upper partof the Sun is visible above the horizon even though the centre has set. In addition

atmospheric refraction rises the image of the Sun more than , causing the Sun toseemingly hesitate before setting and after rising.

On the Arctic Circle you would have one night with midnight Sun and one full mid-winter day when the Sun does not rise, a Polar Night, but the same two effects comeinto play here, changing things just slightly.

Midnight Sun and Polar Nights

Anywhere between, in the Arctic proper you will experience some days of MidnightSun, with the sun never passing below the horizon, and some days when you do not



see the disk of the Sun at all. But contrary to common belief it does only rarely getfully dark in the daytime even on Midwinter midday. Only above 8433 North thesun declines more than 18 below the horizon in due South at Midwinter noon, mak-ing it totally dark, and this is far North of any habitation or landmass of Earth.

Everywhere else there will be at least some twilight for a period of time around noon.At 70 N this twilight on the day of Winter Solstice lasts some 10 hours and 15minutes, making it light enough to travel or do work out of doors easily. Nevertheless

many of the winter days are very gloomy and if there is a cloud cover it will of coursebe much darker.

Not Much Fun for the Star Gazers!

A polar explorer, Edward Parry once in Igloolik just below 70 N attempted to evalu-ate just how dark it becomes. He found out that on Winter Solstice, around December21st the bright star Arcturus was visible in a clear sky until 12 minutes before Noon,and it could be seen again 30 minutes after.

Adding to the illumination during the winter nights is starlight reected in the iceand snow, and in many parts of the Arctic the Aurorae, the Northern Lights that maydance above you for hours on end illuminating the surroundings with a mostly greenlight that occasionally will wash out the light from the stars. On top of this the air is

almost constantly lled with a haze of tiny ice crystals, that will give a foggy impres-sion, showing an almost clear starry sky right above you and increasingly hazyvisibility the closer you get to the horizon.

For the Summer half of the year the twilight lasts the whole night, or the sun is abovethe horizon even at midnight, giving you the beautiful, but in this case annoyingMidnight Sun.

All in all stargazing in the Arctic is not an easy thing.

Missing Planets

Another effect of being this far North is that for long periods of time some of theplanets may not be visible. Depending on how far North you are, some part of theEcliptic never rises above even a at sea horizon, and if a planet happens to be there

you will not see it. Let us take an example. At 70 North, a bit North of Igloolik inNunavut, Canada or Ilulissat in Greenland, 62 of the Ecliptic or a bit more than 1/6of the full Ecliptic circle is never seen. Saturn is the planet which moves most slowlyamong the stars, traversing the 62 over several years. So starting in November1985 and lasting 5 years and 4 months until February 1991 Saturn was not seen.The next such period will begin in July 2016.

The other planets move faster, making the time of invisibility shorter. Observing fromfurther North makes the situation even worse.

This may be the reason why the planets have only little signicance in Inuit sky lore.Only Venus is mentioned to some extent.

The Moon

By and large the Moon follows the path of the Sun across the sky, giving rise to oneof the aspects of the Brother-Moon and Sister-Sky legend. This means that there aretimes and latitudes where the Moon is in the sky continuously for longer periods, andother times when it is hidden below the horizon. The full Moon will naturally alwaysbe opposite the Sun, so generally in Winter when the Sun is low, the full Moon willrise high during night hours giving much needed light for outdoors activities. At thesame time of year the crescent new or old Moons are not easily observed, becausethe Moon during these phases is always close in the sky to the low Sun.


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During the Summer months the full Moon is invisible most of the time as it is deep be-low the horizon in the North at noon, but at midnight it will occasionally peek abovethe horizon in the South. In the full blaze of the Midnight Sun it will not be muchnoticed or needed though.

Phases

The Inuit had names for the phases of the Moon [AS135] and also a practical(though erroneous!) explanation for them: The waxing and waning is seen because

the Moon is a thin round disk of ice which follows the Sun and turns about of itself,so that it sometimes looks big and sometimes thin, according to Inuit in the EasternArctic [AS133].

The myth of the origin of the Sun and Moon explains the phases from another point ofview.

Lunar phases as known in Igloolik, Canada:

Waxing = piruqpalliajuq

Waning = nungupalliajuq

Full = naaqquruktuq

Gibbous = qullikkuminaqsijuqHalf = nappalluaruqtuq

Intermediate = alungajuq

Crescent = taqqiniktuq

New = taqqiila

To the Inuit the Moon is also connected to the tides, the weather, the menstrual cycleof women, the movement of game animals, and it is used as a time marker. Eclipsesof the Moon and the Sun were known [AS136] and feared as an omen that the worldmight end. To test the omen, you could pinch the ear of a dog. If it whined, the endwas not yet due.

The Circumpolar Moon

The Midnight Sun of Summer has a parallel during winter. The path of the Moon isnot exactly the same as the one that the Sun follows. The orbit of the Moon is inclineda bit more than 5 to the Ecliptic, and this causes the Moon at times to stand higherthan usual in the sky, giving rise to a phenomenon specic to the Arctic; the Circum-polar Moon. At certain times of its cycle the Moon will not set at all for a period ofseveral days if you observe it from above a certain latitude. The southern limit of theCircumpolar Moon is 6128. At 70 you will experience a period of up to 7 daysaround a Winter Full Moon with the Moon continuously circling; never setting. In the5-6 years before and after there is also a circumpolar Moon period in winter, but fora shorter stretch of days.

The phenomenon will repeat every 18.6 years, concurrent with the so-called MajorLunar Standstills, and the next period is centered around 2023.

In StarLab it is a bit difcult to simulate the Circumpolar Moon, but Activity 6 givesyou some hints.

Some Mythological Stories

Knud Rasmussen pointed out once that Inuit tales were never intended to be read.

In print they are completely out of context, like reading a musical score as compared



to hearing a symphony performed by an orchestra. In writing, the stories lack theessential vitality bestowed by a narrator, who makes each telling a creation, a uniqueevent.

The legends are not for fun, so when retelling do it with some respect! Apart frombeing mythological explanations and reminders of your place in the world, they aretools of survival in a non-literate culture. When traveling your life could depend onyour ability to recognize the navigation stars. There are several Inuit stories about

hunters who misinterpreted the sky and were lost on the sea ice because they took thewrong way. Remembering what you learned about the stars is so much easier if youhave a legend to help your memory, especially in a critical situation.

The Creation [AS260]

From: The People of the Polar North, Knud Rasmussen, 1908

That time, very long ago, when the earth was made, it dropped down from above the soil, the hills and the stones down from the heavens; and that is how theworld came into existence. When the world was made people came. They say thatthey came out of the earth. Babies came out of the earth. They came out among thewillow bushes, covered with willow leaves. And they lay there among the dwarf wil-

lows with closed eyes and sprawled. They could not even crawl about. They got theirfood from the earth.

Then there is a story of a man and a woman; but how came it to be? It is a riddle- when did they find each other, when did they grow up? I do not know. But thewoman made babies clothes and wandered about. She found the babies, dressedthem , and brought them home.

That is how there came to be so many people.

When there were so many of them they wanted dogs. And a man went out with dogsharness in his hand, and began to stamp on the ground, calling Hoc, hoc, hoc!Then the dogs sprang out of little tiny mounds. And they shook themselves well, for

they were covered with sand. That is how men got dogs.

But men increased; they grew more and more numerous. They did not know death,at that time so very long ago, and they grew very old; at length they could not walk;they grew blind and had to lie down.

Nor did they know the Sun; they lived in the dark; the daylight never dawned. Itwas only inside the houses that there was light; they burnt water in the lamps; at thattime water would burn.

But the people who did not know how to die grew too many; they overfilled the earth- and then there came a mighty flood. Many men were drowned, and men grewfewer. The traces of this flood are to be found on the tops of the high hills, where you

often find shells.

Then when men had grown fewer, two old women began one day to talk to eachother. Let us be without the daylight, if at the same time we can be without death!said the one, doubtless she was afraid of death.

Nay! said the other, we will have both light and death.

And as the old woman said those words, it was so - light came and with it death.


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It is said that when the first man died, they covered up the corpse with stones. But thebody came back; it did not properly understand how to die. It stuck its head up fromthe stone sleeping-place and tried to get up. But an old woman pushed it back.

We have enough to drag about with us and the sledges are small!

They were, you must know, just about to start on a seal-catching expedition. An sothe corpse had to return to its stone grave.

As men by this time had light, they could go on long seal-hunting expeditions, and nolonger needed to eat the soil. And with death came the Sun, the Moon, and the stars.

For when people die, they go up to Heaven and grow luminous.

Told by Arnaaluk, (Greenland)

Brother-Moon and Sister-Sun

From: The Ammassalik Eskimo, Gustav Holm, 1914.

The Moon dwelt in a house in this country, where his sister the Sun also dwelt. Whenthe lamps were put out in the evening, the Moon went and lay with his sister. As she

wished to find out who it was that lay with her night after night, she smeared herhands one evening with lamp-soot. When the lamps had been put out, and he laywith her as usual, she rubbed her hands over his shoulders. Next morning when thelamps were lit, his sister said that there was someone who had soot on them. Whenshe found out that it was her brother, she took her knife, sharpened it, cut off one ofher breasts and tossed it to her brother, saying, As you seem to be so fond of me, eatme then! She now took a small stick, stuck some moss on one end of it, dipped it intrain-oil, and set fire to it. Then she ran out, and as she ran, she rose up in the air.When the Moon came out and saw that she was up in the air, he ran in and stucksome lamp-moss on his sermiaut, set fire to it, and ran out with it in pursuit of hissister. But when he came up in the air, the lamp-moss went out, leaving only someglowing embers.

When the Moons lighted stick is about to go out, he blows on it, so that sparks flyout in all directions, and it is these that turn into stars. The Moon does not shine sobrightly, because he has only a glow, and sometimes he must go down to earth to huntseals; but the Sun shines brightly and gives forth warmth, for the lamp-moss was stillburning, when she came up into the air.

Told by Sanimuinak (East Greenland)

A sermiaut(sermiiaat - modern) is an ice scraper for the kayak.

This story is known all over the Inuit world, but in many variants. Sometimes thepersons are named Aningaat and Naiya, meaning older brother and younger sister;or Taqqiq and Seqiniq, meaning Moon and Sun. In most versions, though not inthis one, the two when outside start running in circles clockwise, the way the Sunand Moon still move across the sky from East to West. The reddening of the Sun whenlow in the sky is explained as blood and gore from the wounds in her breast. On theMoon you still see the dark markings of the soot from her hands.

The phases of the Moon occur because the brother is starving in his eternal chase,so he shrinks and wanes away. He then accepts his sisters offering and eats from thesevered breast, waxing again.



On rare occasions the Moon succeeds in catching his sister, causing a Solar eclipsewhere he modestly covers her from our eyes. Lunar eclipses on the other hand occurwhen the brother has to return to Earth to help someone, to hunt or to defecate, so itis told.

The Man in the Moon and the Entrail Snatcher [AS265]

The Man in the Moon, in spite of his incestuous behavior can also be benevolent toman. He is in charge of some of the game animals, and can send them to the hunter.He rules weather and thunder, and you can call on him for help. When things turnbad the angakkut can visit him to atone for breaches of the taboos, that the Moon-man supervises, but it is a dangerous undertaking. (In the original version of thisstory the Entrail Snatcher is a man, but this seems to be an error caused by Holtvedstranslator.)

From: The Polar Eskimos, Erik Holtved, 1951 (here abbreviated some).

(After a violent fight with her husband a wife leaves home to be a mountainwalker,a qivittoq, and in her need she calls on the Moon). At last she began to say: Moon,come down to me!

And then she again remained sitting for some time. To be sure, it now began to

darken. The Moon was darkened, it began to grow quite dark. At last she couldbegin to hear a tremendous rumbling, something that rumbled tremendously. It wasthe Moon coming down to her, the great man in the Moon. He began to open hisgreat sledge-skins, beautiful, large bear-skins. Only the lower one he left where it was.Then he said to the poor beaten woman: Please, now only sit down there. Thenthey drove off.

After some time the sledge ceased making a noise. Then again they drove for a littlewhile, and it did not take long, before they could again be felt not to have firmground under them, because the sledge now made no noise.

At last they seemed to have stopped, and the Moon began to open the many sledge-

skins. On the large meat platform she could see the animals moving; they were alive,both bears and other great animals. When she now came up beside him, he, theMoon , invited his (new) wife to enter, saying: Please enter, but take care not to lookinto the side-house, for my little sister is apt to singe all that is strange to her!

She now went in, and she was on the point of glancing towards the sidehouse, butalas one side of the border of her hood was singed. Then she sat down on the sleepingplatform and for the time being remained sitting there. At the front wall of the houseshe caught sight of some poor human beings; their faces were one broad grin - theyhad no entrails. Whenever they swallowed something, they had chewed a little, it fellright through them.

The Moon now said to her, Look here! My poor cousin, the entrail snatcher, willsurely come in to take away thy entrails, but now listen how to act. Thou must beginto blow and at the same time to thrust thy hands in under the front flap of thy furcoat, holding them so that they resemble a bear. Then she must take herself off. Dothus, whenever thou art on the point of smiling.

..the entrail snatcher entered, carrying a dish and a large knife. And look! At thewindow a woman stood and kept on saying: She smiles!

The entrail snatcher began to dance a drum dance, with ridiculous movements, and


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they only looked at her, while she sang.

At last she could hardly keep from smiling when looking at her, but she placed herhands under the front part of her fur coat and blew violently, as the Moon had toldher to do. And indeed she took herself off, the entrail-snatcher, over there, saying:One with blubber (i.e. a bear) is heard! Then she disappeared.

One day when cleaning the house, she (the poor woman) caught sight of the shoul-

der-blade of a reindeer behind the lamp. She removed it, and what did she see? Alarge hole, deep, deep down.

Sometimes, it is told, when the Moon was out hunting and stayed away long, theSun used to come and peep in. It wore mens kamiks, and its hams were bleeding vio-lently. One day it said to her: I have wounds on the hind parts of my thighs, becausethy children make string figures, while the Sun shines, at the time of the year when itrises higher in the sky!

One day the Moon opened the reindeer shoulder-blade over there at the wall andsaid to the woman: Peep down there! It was dark. They are down there, thy rela-tives! The Moon began to whittle a walrus tusk, and at last he let his whittling falldown through the hole and closed it again. After a while she peeped down again, andnow she saw her family.

(The woman becomes pregnant and wishes to return to her family, and ...) TheMoon took her home on his sledge.

Told by Amaunalik (North Greenland)

The Great Polar Bear Hunt (retold)

Once a group of four hunters went off on a polar bear hunt with their dogs. Duringthe hunt one of the men dropped his mitten from the sledge, and after some consid-eration he leaves the others to retrieve it. He never manages to find it though, so hereturns to the village. The other three passed by a house where an unclean woman,one who has recently had a child and whose period of taboo was not over, came outand saw them. This is such a bad thing to happen that both the hunters, that wecall The Runners, their dogs, and the bear turn into stars in the sky, to warn us allagainst forgetting such things.

In the Winter sky you can still see them running in a row. Up in front of them thedogs, Qimmit, have surrounded the bear, Nanurjuk, on two sides, making up a Vformation of small stars. Nanurjuk himself has been wounded. If you look closelyyou can see that his bright star is reddened by the blood.

Below the Runners, Ullaktut, you can see Qangiammaariik, their children, com-ing in a row with warm fur clothes, that almost cover them and make them fuzzy.Further down to the right a bright star (Rigel) shows you where the lost mitten still

lies for anyone to come by an pick it up. Remember to do so if you pass by, maybe onyour way to visit the Man in the Moon!

The Great Bear [AS278]

From: The People of the Polar North, Knud Rasmussen, 1908.

A woman who had had a miscarriage had run away from her family. As she ran shecame to a house. In the house-passage lay the skins of bears. She went in.

The inhabitants turned out to be bears in human shape.



But she stayed with them. One big bear caught seals for them. He pulled on his skin,went out, and remained away for some time, but always brought something home.One day the woman who had run away took a fancy to see her relations and wantedto go home. Then the bear spoke to her. Do not talk about us when you get back tomen, he said to her. He was afraid that his two young ones might be killed by men.

So the woman went home, and a great desire to tell came over her. One day as shesat lousing her husband, she whispered in his ear, I have seen bears!

Many sledges drove out. When the bear saw them coming towards his house he hadgreat compassion for his young ones and bit them to death. He did not wish them tofall into the power of men. Then he rushed out to look for the woman who had de-ceived him, broke into the house where she was, and bit her to death. When he cameout again the dogs closed up in a circle round him and rushed upon him. The beardefended himself, and suddenly they all became luminous and rose up into the sky asstars. And those are what they call Qilugtuussat; they who are like a flock of barkingdogs after a bear.

Since then men have been cautious about bears, for they hear what men say.

Told by Aisivak (North Greenland)

The Orphan Boy, the Old Man and the Grandmother [AS230]

Iliarjugaarjuk, Uttuqalualuk and Ningiuraaluk.

Uttuqalualuk, when he was a young man, murdered his brother-in-law and kept ita secret. He grew old with this secret. Iliarjugaarjuk, who had lost both parents, wasnow living with his grandmother. Whenever Iliarjugaarjuk visited Uttuqaualuk theold man would taunt him, chanting: Iliarjugaarjuup katuma arnavit pamialluaailugu kikkaruk, pamaa! - Orphan, go and get your mothers tailbone and eat themeat from it, pamaa!

For some time Iliarjugaarjuk did not tell his grandmother about the old mansinsults. When he eventually did, his grandmother told him to reply to Uttuqalua-

luk thus: Uttuqalualuup piksuma sakialli angialli qungnikut sallikut kivitipiuk,pamaa! - Uttuqalualuk, your brother-in- law is your secret. On the crack at thefurther pressure ridge you did sink him, pamaa!

Iliarjugaarjuks grandmother taught him these lines.

For some time the orphan was anxious and uncertain and would not risk to say thesewords to the old man even though Uttualualuk continued to taunt him as before.His grandmother, however, kept asking if he had yet responded to Uttuqalualuk inthe manner she had taught him, adding that if the old man became aggressive onhearing these words she would come to Iliarjugaarjuks rescue.

So once again the orphan boy visited the old man and, as usual, Uttuqalualuk sang:Iliarjugaarjuup katuma arnavit pamiallua ailugu kikkaruk, pamaa! - Orphan,go and get your mothers tailbone and eat the meat from it, pamaa!

This time, when Uttuqalualuk had finished, the orphan boy summoned all his cour-age and responded in the manner he had been taught by his garndmother: Uttuqa-lualuup piksuma sakialli angialli qungnikut sallikut kivitipiuk, pamaa! - Uttuqa-lualuk, your brother-in- law is your secret. On the crack at the further pressure ridgeyou did sink him, pamaa!


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Having said this, Iliarjugaarjuk, following his grandmothers instructions fled theigloo. All at once the old man took his knife and started to chase the boy. They ranround and round the igloo, the boy fleeing and the old man following. The grand-mother did not immediately notice that Uttuqalualuk was chasing Iliarjugaarjuk, soshe was late in coming to the rescue. As she joined the chase, the two in front of her,the boy and the old man, suddenly rose upwards into the sky. The grandmother fol-lowed and they all turned into stars. The first two are therefore called Sivulliik and

the late one, that is the one behind, is called Kingullialuk. Told by Herv Paniaq (Igloolik, Canada)

Naalagssartoq [AS281]

From: The Polar Eskimos, Erik Holtved, 1951

The great Naalagssartoq (Naalassartoq - modern, Greenland), it is told, used tocatch seals at breathing-holes at a short distance from the shore. There he alwaysstood waiting at the breathing-hole. At one time at last a number of children beganto play at the huge crack in the mountain at Agpalersoq (Appalersoq - modern),while Naalagssartoq stood waiting at the breathing-hole below. While playing theyshouted and made a terrible noise, so that Naalagssartoq said to them, You make

my seal keep down, you make my seal keep down!Then at last he exclaimed: Let them be locked in, those up there, let the crack closeabove them! - because they all along frightened off the seal, which he was lying inwait for. In this manner he locked them in.

As the crack closed above them, there was one who just managed to get out. She whocarried a child in her amaut did not get out. He now ran up to Agpalersoq saying:Naalagssartoq has locked my comrades into the large mountain crack. Hehas causedthem terrible harm!

When the people heard it, they immediately set off towards him, but first they wentto see, how it was with the children who had been locked in. Armed with lances they

then approached Naalagssartoq in order to kill him. There he stood and could seethem approach. When there was only a short distance between him and them, hesuddenly rose up into the air.

When he had now risen right up into the air and was transformed into the starNaalagssartoq (Venus) they had to give up getting hold of him. They thereforereturned home in order to see how the children fared. They were woefully lockedinto the crack. They could hear the little child crying incessantly. For some time theytried to get down to set them free, but this turned out to be impossible. The little onedown there with the child in the amaut could be heard to say, Mother up there - thekamik soles, in order to finish them she had taken off the kamik sole.

For some time they kept on providing for the children, as well as they could, by send-

ing something down through the little aperture. At last they buried them by puttinglarge stones over them. Sincethen nothing has been heard of them.

Told by Amaunalik (Northwest Greenland)

The Woman Who Married a Dog

From: The People of the Polar North, Knud Rasmussen, 1908

There was once a woman who had a daughter. When the daughter grew up, themother in vain encouraged her to find a man to marry, but the daughter rejected all



men. At last the mother became angry and told her dog to marry the daughter. Thedog did so, and it lived with the girl. Thus having punished her daughter, the motherafter some time had the daughter sent to a small island, and here the daughter had alitter of puppies as her children.

The dog was not brought to the island with the girl, and when the dog tried to swimover to her, the mother suddenly took pity on her daughter and strapped some stonesaround the neck of the dog so it drowned when it tried to swim to the island.

The girls father used to row over to the island with meat to feed his daughters off-spring. One day the daughter told the puppies, When your grandfather arrives tofeed you, you shall tear him apart and eat him!

And they did so.

Afterwards the daughter placed all the puppies in the sole of a kamik boot and setthem to sea. When they drifted away from shore she said, You will live from nowon without ever needing anything!

They tell that the puppies floated away to some far-off country where they turnedinto white men, and from them all white men come.

Told by Jonasine Nielsen of Saattoq, Greenland

This last story actually has nothing at all to do with the sky, but it may tell a bit of thethought patterns of the Inuit towards others. In other versions of this legend half of thelitter become Indians and the other half white men. Dogs are a necessity - your lifedepends on them but they do not have a very high status. The word Inuit itself meanshuman beings!

Some words explained (spellings vary widely around the Arctic

area)

amaut - the hood of a woman's anorak used for carrying small children. W. Green-land: amaat

annoraq - a fur parkaangakkok - shaman, spirit traveller. Plural angakkut

ajaraaq - string games

Nunavut - area of northern Canada with some home rule and special protectionplans for the Arctic nature and culture.

Inuit - human beings. Singular: Inuk

Eskimo - esquimaux, by some regarded as a negative word, allegedly from an Indianlanguage, meaning those eating raw meat or those speaking a foreign language.

Arctic - from Greek meaning bear, that is the area under the Bear (Ursa Major, or theGreat Dipper) or in the direction of the bear, North.

ulu - a semi-circular womens knife

kamik - seal skin boots


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Credits and Author Notes

This is NOT a work of science! It is intended to be an introduction to the rich world ofInuit culture and star lore. Most references and a lot of background information has

been left out deliberately, for the sake of the stories themselves. I hope that this willwhet the appetite more for the teachers and pupils that encounter this text. There ismuch, more, and it is quite easy to nd.

While researching for this work, I quickly discovered that someone had been therebefore and had done all the tedious work before me. That someone is John MacDon-ald of the Nunavut Research Institute in Igloolik, Canada. In his wonderful book The

Arctic Sky(ISBN 0-88854-427-8 pbk, 0-88854-432-4 bound, published in 1998and 2000, and may it never go out of print!) John MacDonald has gathered a lot ofmaterial on Inuit star lore, cosmogony and other sky-related material, mainly from theIgloolik area, but his research covers the whole of the Arctic and the list of referencesis impressive to say the least. Do not hesitate to buy the book!

For the benet of the good cause of spreading the knowledge of Inuit star lore, JohnMacDonald has graciously permitted me to base this work on his book. He has alsoread the material before publication, but of course all responsibilities for errors andmisinterpretations are still mine alone. For any failure to treat the Inuit languagesproperly I also ask for forgiveness, as I do not know more than a handful of words.

The Arctic Skyis richly and beautifully illustrated, but the artwork in this text and onthe Inuit cylinder is original, partly because of copyright reasons, partly because ofthe special requirements of the STARLAB cylinder technology, and partly because Ihave wished to give this material a slightly stronger Greenlandic emphasis than thebook has.

This work is one part of the Ulloriarsiooq project. Ulloriarsiooq (meaning StarGazerin Greenlandic) is a STARLAB now owned by the Nuuk, Greenland-based centre for

educational material, Inerisaavik. A string of generous donators enabled Inutek, thetechnological society of Greenland to purchase and donate this planetarium to thechildren of Greenland, Kalaalit Nunat during 2005. I happily accepted the task ofproducing the text material and to develop new illustrations for this Inuit STARLABcylinder.

One may nd, correctly, that legends from the Siberian Inuit are missing. The reasonis that the published material is very thin, and not much anthropological work hasbeen done in the Soviet days.

Thanks are due for the assistance with this work to more people than I can mentionhere, but any of you reading this will know whom I mean.

Finally Id like to paraphrase the last words of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe: May

this work not have been in vain!

Ole J. Knudsen,

Planetarium Manager,

Steno Museum,

Aarhus, Denmark

[email protected]



Suggested STARLAB Activities in

STARLAB Using the Inuit Cylinder

1. The movement of the stars at the North Pole, at 70 and at your home latitude. Use Activity 5-6 Position of the North Pole in Astronomy and More, Vol. 1.Shift to your home latitude and then to 70 N to compare.

You can change between the standard Stareld cylinder, the Inuit cylinder orfor the older children, the Lewis and Clark or the Celestial Coordinates cylinderwhich includes the ecliptic and the celestial equator.

2. The Midnight Sun and the Polar Night [AS293]

The same cylinders as those used in Activity 1 can be used to demonstrate themidnight Sun.

The position on the Ecliptic of the Sun at the equinoxes and the solstices aremarked. At a latitude above the Polar Circle note how the Sun does not set for

some days or weeks during the summer half of the year, and how the number ofdays increase as you approach the North Pole. With the 12 solar positions ofthe standard Stareld you can do this month by month.

You can combine this with Activity 6-2 Sunrise and Sunset positions.

If you cover the Sun at the Equinoxes and at the Summer Solstice (use a bit of yellownote block paper, do not use tape or gaffa) you can also demonstrate that duringwinter the Sun never rises the Polar Night. In some positions at least the WinterSolstice Sun is visible on the dome, or you can observe the position of the SummerSolstice Sun and mirror the position.

For full darkness to reign the Sun has to be more than 18 below the Horizon. Astro-nomical Twilight (faint Twilight visible) is seen when the Sun is between 18 and 12

below; Nautical Twilight (Navigational stars visible) occurs with the Sun between 12and 6 below; Civil Twilight (You can read a paper under a clear sky) is from Sunsetuntil the Sun is 6 below Horizon.

3) Return of the Sun. Set the latitude to 70 N. Find the two stars Aagjuuk andplace them low over the horizon in North East. Read off (some of) the date andtimes of day that correspond to this position. Try to estimate the position of theSun and the amount of Twilight at the various dates (see activity 2), and ndout at what time of year the Inuit celebrate the new year as the emergence ofAagjuuk a few days before they disappear in the Twilight.

Do the same for 80N. Is there any difference ?

4 Time of Night. Can you use the stars as a clock? Set the latitude to 70 or someother Arctic latitude, and set the sky for early winter. Put on the cardinal points

and let the sky turn slowly. Note some corresponding positions of bright stars,compass directions and times of day.

Try to remember some positions make a rhyme or a short story to help you remem-ber.

Set the sky to late winter and do the same. Note how most of the same stars are vis-ible, but they have changed positions.

Now return to early winter and see how much you can remember of the correspond-


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ing positions and times. And maybe do the same for this season.

5) How bright is the midwinter twilight? Try to reconstruct Parrys measurements.Place Arcturus in the south and slowly fade the white house lights of the projec-tor up. When can you not see it anymore? Note the position of the faders. Thenfade up to full, look away turn the projector hour forwards and dim the lightsslowly. Note the position of the faders again. Are they the same as before?Why do you think that it requires less light to nd the star again?

6) The circumpolar Moon [AS296]. NOT EASY!With the Transparent Cylinderyou could draw the ecliptic and put a Moon symbol 5 higher than the summersolstice position of the Sun to show the full moon at Major Standstill. Then choosea proper Arctic or near Arctic latitude and let the sky roll! The Moon will act as aMidnight Sun and never set. As the Moon moves some 12 Eastwards per fullday, one day later it will also have moved closer to the Ecliptic, and after a weekit will cross the Ecliptic. Sometimes during this interval the Moon will stop beingcircumpolar and set. For the days up to the full Moon the situation is reversed.Remember that after a week the Moon is no longer full but half, and not as usefulfor illumination in the darkness.

Try do the same demonstration with a summer full Moon, and see how it fails. Thiscan also be used to demonstrate why some of the planets are absent from the Arctic

sky for years on end in periods.If you want to go deeper into the matter with older children, try to draw the full orbitof the Moon during Major Standstill and, in another colour Minor Standstill, but bewarned: it becomes very complicated very fast!

If you dont own the Transparent Cylinder, hurry up and buy it! While you wait fordelivery you can use the standard Stareld Cylinder and place one of the planetprojectors (Mars is good because of the distinct colour) as a marker for the position ofthe winter full moon at Major Standstill.

Moving this Moon-marker the proper 12 steps during a presentation calls for consid-erable skills. You can always let the children try it if you fail!!!

Other acitivities with relations to this text include: 5-7 The Ecliptic, Celestial Coor-dinates cylinder text, pg. 3. Native American Mythology cylinder, Lapp/Sami SkyMythology Cylinder mostly to note that there is no overlap. The Inuit language isnot related to any other language nor is the mythology both are totally unique.

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